Robberies Lead Post Office to Delay Some Deliveries : Crime: Officials say problem peaks when government checks are mailed. They appeal for residents’ vigilance.

Robberies of Los Angeles mail carriers--particularly on the first of the month when government checks are delivered--have soared, prompting postal authorities to take drastic security measures and to plead with residents to keep “a watchful eye” on their neighborhood carriers.

Fully half of the 294 robberies of carriers or postal facilities in the United States last year occurred in the Postal Service’s six-county Greater Los Angeles region. There were 148 robberies in the region in 1994, more than six times as many as in New York.

Postal Service officials now station more than 100 armed postal inspectors along mail routes on the first of the month in the city’s core. Earlier this month, they suspended first-of-the-month mail delivery to several blocks where letter carriers have been threatened repeatedly.

And in the broadest evidence yet of the scope of the problem, authorities since January have sent letters to hundreds of thousands of residents asking them to discourage would-be robbers by stepping outside and keeping watch when their carriers are on the delivery route. Carriers, the letters said, will now honk three times when they park their vehicle in a neighborhood on the first of the month as a signal to residents to be alert.

The letters were mailed to residents served by 15 post offices from West Los Angeles to Los Feliz to South-Central Los Angeles--a quarter of all post offices in Los Angeles.

“For those of you home during the day, when you hear the horn, it would be most appreciated and beneficial if you would come outside, maybe to work in the yard, work on your car, walk the dog, or just visit your neighbors,” said the letter, written by Larry S. Crawford Jr., Los Angeles postal inspector-in-charge. “When would-be thieves see potential witnesses keeping an eye on the mail and the letter carrier, they will leave instead of stealing your mail.”

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Thefts of mail, rare in the past, began to soar nationally in 1992, with the worst problems in the Los Angeles region. They rose here from 41 in 1992 to 73 in 1993 to 148 last year, postal inspectors said.

Nowhere has the robbery problem been more severe than in Watts, where the frequency of attacks on letter carriers prompted officials last week to suspend delivery to six blocks at the start of the month, when both county welfare and federal Social Security checks are sent out. On check days--the first and the third of the month--the 225 residents of these blocks must pick up their mail at a station two miles away or wait an extra day.

“People here have to pay bills, too,” complained Rudolph Thomas, 65, who lives on 99th Street. “It makes it very inconvenient for people who live here and can’t get around. But I guess it’s even more inconvenient when your check is stolen.”

The letters were sent to the following post offices, listed by their Postal Service regions:

Southwest--Sanford, Dockweiler, Crenshaw, Rimpau, La Tijera, Hancock, Wagner, West Adams.

Southeast--Greenmead, Broadway-Manchester, Main Los Angeles Post Office, Colonel Washington.

Northeast--Los Feliz, Oakwood.

Northwest--Palms.

The practice of suspending mail delivery in troubled areas is rare but not unprecedented. Similar restrictions have been implemented in Atlanta and Dallas after postal carriers were robbed by gunmen seeking checks.

“Thefts of the mail are a cyclical problem, but we have never experienced the number of robberies against letter carriers that we are having today,” said postal inspector Randy DeGasperin.

The Postal Service has joined forces with local police and with other federal agencies in an effort to stop the robberies. In October, 1993, the Postal Service contracted with an armored car company rather than using postal vehicles to transport cash receipts from some post offices.

At the Greenmead postal station, which serves a Watts neighborhood where check-day delivery has been suspended, 25 of 110 mail carriers have been robbed or have had their vehicles broken into over the last two years, officials say. The station has operated in temporary quarters since the post office was burned down during the 1992 riots.

Jackquelyn D. Scorza, Greenmead’s manager, said a number of security measures have been taken, such as installing tamper-proof locks on trucks. Ironically, these measures seem to have encouraged thieves to go after mail carriers, a trend officials compare to the rise in carjackings after more motorists began using anti-theft devices on their cars.

“We are fortunate that no one has been killed,” said Larry Brown, the president of the local letter carrier’s union. “We try to tell carriers to give up the mail (when confronted by a robber). We don’t want any heroes.”

The attacks on carriers have taken a heavy toll at Greenmead.

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Alvin Farr, 44, still suffers psychological scars from a noontime pistol-whipping by a gunman who stole his mail on a street corner near Central Avenue and 96th Street.

And Beverly Robinson still becomes teary-eyed when she thinks of the man who shouted, “Give up the bag!” and stuck a weapon in her side.

“I thought people cared,” she said.

Williams Ezpeleta remembers little of what happened Oct. 1, when he was knocked unconscious for five minutes by a man wielding a metal club.

Then there is the guilt that Tony Jones, 27, said he experienced after someone broke into his truck and stole the mail.

“The first thing I thought was that the people were going to get mad at me because I didn’t have their check,” he said.

The Postal Service offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the capture of whoever broke into Jones’ truck. The Postal Service is hoping rewards and press releases urging the public to help will stem the tide of crime. It has also established a hot line--(818) 405-1200--for residents to report suspected robbers to postal inspectors.

In one of the press releases, residents were urged to make videotapes of suspicious-looking people loitering around mail trucks.

John Brugger, a Washington-based spokesman for the postal inspectors, said that many of those involved in postal thefts are teen-agers working in gangs for older ringleaders.

“We have been working hard to get the guys calling the shots, not just the kids running the streets,” he said. Officials arrested 21 robbery suspects in 1993 and 37 last year.

On 91st Street in South-Central Los Angeles, where thieves have broken into the mail trucks twice this month, Margarite White, 73, is keeping a constant lookout for the mail after receiving Crawford’s plea for residents to get involved in protecting their carriers.

“When I see them come I sit by my window and watch the truck,” she said “It’s a shame that it has to be that way.”